Stuff

There is a new Opinium poll in the Observer with topline figures of CON 37%(+3), LAB 31%(+2), LDEM 6%(-1), UKIP 15%(-2), GRN 4%(nc) – changes are from a month ago. The Conservatives have a healthy lead, but not the sort of big honeymoon lead that ICM and YouGov both showed them enjoying.

The Observer’s write up concentrates on the Labour race. Among current Labour voters Jeremy Corbyn is the preferred choice of 54%, Owen Smith of 22%. Labour voters do not, of course, necessarily reflect the preferences of the Labour members and supporters who get a vote, though the previous YouGov polling of Labour party members also suggested a large lead for Corbyn. On who would make the best Prime Minister (among the general public, rather than just Labour supporters!) Theresa May leads Corbyn by 52% to 16%.

441 Responses to “Opinium/Observer – CON 37, LAB 31, LD 6, UKIP 15”

@Neil A Your preferred solution is the one I want. Effectively this means that i want to stay in the EU (if we allow the rest of the EU to set the rules on services we are stuffed).

Unfortunately I don’t see how we can have this solution without a) refusing to action article 50 and b) having another election or referendum to legitimise the new ‘solution’. The Brexiters see this as ‘undemocratic’ but I don’t see why, if we get some sort of a deal on immigration. It’s a new situaton why not a new vote?

Its you and the PLP that have their fingers in their ears singing la la la. You believe that a more right wing leader can take Labour to power, because you think the base voters have no choice but to vote labour. You believe that a better comunicater can pretend to be left wing to win the base and at the same time appeal to more right wing voters, its not going to work. You are living in fantasy land. You still don’t understand the brexit vote, people want change!

I rather like Jeremy Corbyn, and I quite admire the way he has refused to be crowbarred out of the leadership by the PLP.

I think he is certain to win against Owen Smith, and by a wide margin.

But there is very little polling evidence to suggest that he will be anything other than trounced at the next GE.

So what do the PLP do after Corbyn’s inevitable victory in the leadership election? Hang around for four years with a leader they loathe, with defeat inevitable, and their constituency party threatening deselection?

I think they will split, and that there will be enough of them, crucially, to become the official Opposition. The Corbynites will presumably be entitled to retain the Labour name and apparatus, but that may be no bad thing – it might be better for the new party to appear as fresh as possible.

Political parties are very resilient, and are frequently written off prematurely, but I do get the feeling that Labour is terminally ill.

Millie
If 150 resigned to fight by election as anti -Corbyn Labour candidates I suspect that almost all would be re-elected with the official Labour candidates often polling fairly derisory vote shares. On returning to Westminster those MPs might well be sufficiently numerous to become the Official Opposition under their own Leader.

Well that’s an interesting theory, it would be good to test it. Personally i will be campaigning hard for bye elections if MPs split off. I believe they will be massacred, no one actually likes any of these MPs

RON OLDENI don’t dispute that the Free Movement of people is feature of the Treaty.

I don’t think you can have read the 2009 Consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union, available free in PDF here. [also available in EPUB format via the E-BOOKS link on the same page]

Article 45 of the Consolidated treaty states:1. Freedom of movement for workers shall be secured within the Union.
2. Such freedom of movement shall entail the abolition of any discrimination based on nationality between workers of the Member States as regards employment, remuneration and other conditions of work and employment.
3. It shall entail the right, subject to limitations justified on grounds of public policy, public security or public health:
(a) to accept offers of employment actually made;
(b) to move freely within the territory of Member States for this purpose;
(c) to stay in a Member State for the purpose of employment in accordance with the provisions governing the employment of nationals of that State laid down by law, regulation or administrative action;
(d) to remain in the territory of a Member State after having been employed in that State, subject to conditions which shall be embodied in regulations to be drawn up by the Commission.
4. The provisions of this Article shall not apply to employment in the public service.

Para 3(d) might give the Commission a little wriggle room, but changing article 45 in any meaningful way would require a new treaty, which the UK government did NOT request [at least not publicly], and probably require 28 referendums to confirm.

As I said and believe, the real problem is that the UK government subsidises bad employers by artificial enhancement of the minimum wage, when it should apply a true “living” minimum wage.

Had any of the latest 3 UK governments done this, inward investment in the UK would doubtless have been somewhat lower and might well have been redirected to some of those EC countries currently exporting workers to the UK, lowering their numbers.

If the UK had a proper living wage it would more than decimate the living standards of the top third of people in this country. Oddly the top third include MPs and journalists, make of that what you will

Personally I think that the labour party could be led to power by a right wing or left wing leader. Neither, however, can gain power without the support of the wing s/he does not represent.

On the matter of personalities I would be much happier if McDonnell was leader. I do not think he is as admirable a man as JC whom I regard as a kind of secular saint. However I do think he is a much abler politician.

Things being as they are we are going to get JC as leader and McD will, I hope and trust, stay as shadow chancellor. Once that happens it seems to me that anyone with any influence with either faction should tell them to be magnanimous, concentrate on the key things on which they agree, and make sure they have a coherent offer tot he electorate next time round.

There are, after all, great prizes on offer. Suppose McDonnell was able to institute the new economics and prove that it was practical and effective so that Labour lost its reputation for economic stupidity, would that not be a wonderful thing?

I should have added that I do have a deal of sympathy with your comments on REGIONAL top-ups of a low minimum wage. Negotiating something like that might well have had a deal of sympathy had that topic been brought up at Lisbon, and such funding is subject to different rules.

The Lab UK government in power at the time did not make any such attempt and there is no evidence that the last PM in the current UK government did, either, in his attempts to get concessions for the UK. Some such arrangement could have been made part of the next planned treaty, with a fudge to allow the UK to implement it on a provisional basis until the next EU treaty is drafted and agreed.

Also, please use BZ to refer to me if you can’t use or don’t like copy and paste.

@Cambridgerachel – “Its you and the PLP that have their fingers in their ears singing la la la. You believe that a more right wing leader can take Labour to power, because you think the base voters have no choice but to vote labour. You believe that a better comunicater can pretend to be left wing to win the base and at the same time appeal to more right wing voters, its not going to work. You are living in fantasy land. You still don’t understand the brexit vote, people want change!”

Well had you been around for a while longer on UKPR you would understand that I have been arguing for radical move to the left for years before Brexit. Somewhat ahead of you there.

I have also never argued for a more right wing Labour leader – ever – and I have consistently warned Labour supporters on here not to take their base for granted. I therefore fundamentally and totally disagree with the tone and content of your post.

My point, particularly since the financial crash, but pre dating that, has been that neoliberal economics has failed and a radical new approach is required. New Labour was culpable in the mistakes of the last 40 years and we can’t go back there.

All I have been saying in the context of Labour’s travails under Corbyn is that they need a solidly left wing leader who is competent and good at the job. Corbyn isn’t – he is useless[1]. The snippet about him walking off a polytechnic course after arguing with the tutor over the curriculum content sounds pretty typical – only Corbyn is right, no one can teach him anything, he knows best.

In terms of taking Labour’s vote for granted – I rather think that is what Corbyn is doing. Party membership is up, and polling support is down. Labour is losing heartland voters, losing in Wales, losing in Sctotland, losing in the north of England, and gaining in London when the mayoral candidate rejects the leadership.

My concern for Labour is the precise opposite of talking their supporters for granted – I know that under Corbyn, millions of voters will desert them in 2020 – that’s why I am so worried.

I very much doubt that they would take that risk. The important factor here is the status of Official Opposition. To have that for four years would be a massive advantage, such that the Corbyn rump could quite quickly become a political irrelevance, and get the 2020 derisory vote to which you refer.

Whilst there are Labour voters through and through, there are also centrists who would never vote ‘Labour’, so there is a strong case for arguing that the name is baggage best discarded.

Of course the SDP candidates were popular, the labour party was trying to go left when the country wanted and needed to go right. The PLP will get trounced because the situation is the exact opposite of 1981, the country wants and needs to go left. Also the SDP folk were seen as basically honest people, rightly or wrongly MPs of all stripes are not seen that way today

@Barbazenzero – I think you might be missing something in A45. As far as I see it, the key line is –

“3. It shall entail the right, subject to limitations justified on grounds of public policy, public security or public health:….”

This is why they can talk about temporary brakes etc, as the treaty allows free movement to be suspended based on the above.

Personally, I think that cameron and the EU were stupid not to craft a deal on these terms. I am not a fan of time limited options, as these seem rather arbitrary, but I would have preferred something based on the rate of inflow, applying also something similar to donor countries where population loss exceeds a certain level.

In the case of the destination countries, large flows could trigger a brake, and for donor countries perhaps greater development finance to try to stop such heavy outmigration. neither would be against the treaties if agreed by the council under the terms above.

the truth was Cameron thought focusing only on welfare would be popular, and the EU thought that the UK would never vote to leave. Both misjudged the mood badly.

I accept all you say, now tell me how you fix it. Corbyn is useless what are the other options, Angela the disassembler or owen the PR faker. Either one will take away party democracy. Corbyn might not be perfect but he’s all we have right now

Rachel
A lot of people said post 2008 crash that the people were likely to shift left but it did not happen . The 2015 election result showed little sign of it – the Tories winning their first majority in 23 years and a big UKIP vote.
I wish it had been otherwise!

The previous figure of 36% from Sky Data has been very widely reported but no-one seems to know how they came up with it… It seems to be one of those dubious figures that fell into such a vacuum that even David Dimbleby was quoting it after the Opinium survey linked above came out.

Hopefully the British Election Study will provide further information when the post-referendum wave comes out

ALEC“3. It shall entail the right, subject to limitations justified on grounds of public policy, public security or public health:….”
This is why they can talk about temporary brakes etc, as the treaty allows free movement to be suspended based on the above.

I agree, although the 7 years some EU source is suggesting to the grauniad is a bit long to be “temporary”. In an EEA scenario it might just be agreed at some additional cost, but I suspect that’s beyond reasonable in the context of EU membership.

The point RON OLDEN made about low minimum wages in rural Wales and similar situations is rather different and really should have been addressed long ago as a regional issue. I haven’t read all the regional provisions, though, so perhaps it already is but our governments haven’t got round to reading it either.

In politician-speak, I am afraid (from your point of view!) that “curbing for 7 years” is definitely within the definition of “curbing”

The Foreign Secretary seemed to make it pretty clear that was what he wanted (ironically I think Theresa May always was and always will be more Eurosceptic than Boris! That does not mean she will not cut a deal for EEA once the pressure from the City becomes a tidal wave however…)

If it gives you any comfort however, the Thatcher rebate has been renewable every seven years I believe, and yet we still have it (less a bit of a reduction by Tony Blair to pay for the eastward expansion that both Tory and Labour politicians were ironically so keen on…)

RON OLDEN
The first picture was a humorous reminder of Wee Burney Nesbitt.
The second picture should have had a clear warning that spit was being exchanged by 2 appalling creatures.

Graham

2008 and Gordon Brown was one of the biggest nails in Labours coffin. The destruction of trust in their ability to squander money and their utter disrespect for the white working class, came home to roost.

@[email protected] “Unfortunately I don’t see how we can have this solution without a) refusing to action article 50 and b) having another election or referendum to legitimise the new ‘solution’. The Brexiters see this as ‘undemocratic’ but I don’t see why, if we get some sort of a deal on immigration. It’s a new situaton why not a new vote?”

—————

I think the concern on the Brexit side is that those against Remain – which includes pretty much all of the civil servants in the negotiations – are going to engineer a situation where the vote becomes meaningless. Also it comes from having the bizarre situation where the change situation is not desired by the governing party or even the opposition.

The government could engage in a collusive negotiation with the EU. They present the following options:

1. Terms for withdrawal which are not much different from staying in.

2. Staying in.

3. Leaving without any terms agreed – Brexit was largely based on the idea that the EU would negotiate sensibly and not punitively. A collusive negotiation could run own the clock on the time for negotiation – meaning that Project Fear could be re-run without any cause for optimism. The EU might be happy with brinkmanship if encouraged by the UK, as well as by the history of success in getting referenda re-run successfully after a few concessions.

If all we get a seven year period where we can use an emergency brake, then what would have been the point? Surely, the whole point of the vote is that we are already in that situation, and we can hardly agree that the need for controls will permanently disappear after 7 years.

Democracy has to allow for responses to changes of circumstances. However, I have no confidence that such changes will be anything other than collusive.

I think in the event of any split the consequences are entirely unpredictable. But I have to say that the idea that 150 MPs would want to set up a new party seems very unlikely. The only ones celebrating a split would be the Tories.

I’d think no more than 50 MPs would even want to consider a new party.

Of those 50 MPs they will be making calculations on whether they could survive a split vote even if they were to get more votes than the official Corbyn candidate. They’d also be calculating the risk of deselection in the first place which may only run into single figures at worst. If they are so unpopular with members locally that they are at risk of deselection then their chances of winning against an official Labour candidate are greatly reduced anyway.

There’s also a big difference between fighting a by election where they might gain votes from other parties including Tory voters and a General election where people tend to revert to their natural home as the Mark Reckless factor kicks in.

If only we English could adopt the same sweetness of character as the Scots when dealing with a neighbour. When have you ever heard an English politician or sporting person or team criticised by Scots?
We really should know better.
Mrs Haines supports Murray (she loves Tennis). When I say “why are you supporting him” ? She replies “why do you not support him, he is British”? I then say, when I ever hear a Scot say something positive or supportive of an English sports person or team, I might support Murray. However, I know it will never happen. As Old Nat well knows, I support the nationalist cause in Scotland 200%.

My impression is that the leave vote is fundamentally soft and reliant on people protesting about various different issues. Sovereignty is a completely different issue from immigration, and only the most hard line leavers tend to focus on these more fundamental principles of EU membership. You obviously cannot have EU membership without sacrificing some sovereignty – it’s as simple as that.

Immigration appears to be the one concern uppermost in the leave working class vote and also the one that is easiest to alleviate by introducing qualifications on exactly who can have free movement and who cannot. If this can be negotiated with the EU there may yet be hope for a second referendum.

All the Labour MPs (and all the other MP’s) are facing reselection due to the boundary review. In many cases the seats will be new and they will have only a partial prior relationship with the members. Also there will be a couple of dozen less safe seats than there were as the total number is cut by 50.

Given that Momentum seem very keen to get rid of any Labour MP who is not a Corbyn supporter, and seem to be very good at mobilising the new Labour members, few of the “gang of 172” can feel sanguine about their survival through to 2020. They may feel that splitting the Party gives them at least a fighting chance…

I can guarantee that virtually all MP’s of all parties have a pang of worry about the boundary review from time to time…

The leavers don’t seem to understand that this referendum was not a General Election where you vote for one set of policies or another set of policies presented by political parties. This was instead a vote for either the preservation of the current order of things, or the unknown. The people chose the unknown – and that is what they’ll get. This may mean many different things as Brexit is not a precisely defined status, other than not being members of the EU. The EU could offer Britain ‘associate membership’ which might mean a form of EEA with some controls on immigration and various other safeguards, or nothing at all (which is frankly unlikely). One thing is certain, and that is that sooner or later a difficult decision will have to be made and that is when there may need to a be second referendum which will decide whether we stay in the European orbit or go into a full separation.

all I was doing was reporting that contrary to what you say, Sovereignty was the number 1 issue for Leave voters according to the BES (and indeed the Ashcroft poll).

The UKIP slogan “take our country back” resonated on a visceral level and my personal view is that all those St George crosses related to the European Championships hardened the Leave vote by a few %, by turning the whole thing into a patriotic issue in the estates where 80% voted Leave (and 50% of houses had a flag hanging out of the window…).

“As Old Nat well knows, I support the nationalist cause in Scotland 200%.”

Indeed you do – in exactly the same way that Trump thinks Mexicans should be self-governing, so they need to be sent back to Mexico.

However, I’m always surprised to hear patriotic Englishmen, like your good self, exclude your compatriots in Northumbria and Cumbria “north of the wall”, as you put it.

Of course, borders are flexible arrangements, so you may wish to cede your territory north of the wall – just as Mexico may wish to have a US-Mexico border wall – but along the 1830s border. And the Apaches might like to tell both of those countries to p*** off, and draw their borders outwith Apache territory.

“I understand your concern that a hard won victory could be overturned by a meaningless fudge. Like Millie in Devon I would like a situation where everyone got a bit more of what they really wanted.”

What do you mean by ‘meaningless fudge’? The very term ‘Brexit’ is essentially meaningless. What is a fudge to some is a triumph for others – and this is where I see the leave camp breaking up into different factions. The ‘soft leavers’ just want more concessions on issues like immigration control while the hardliners want a complete exit and no special relationship with the EU at all.

Not sure that I agree with this view. I regard the sovereignty issue as one most concerning the Tory right and the likes of Davies and Cash, i.e. the right wing middle class. The working class Tories/UKIP supporters were more affected by the impact of east European immigration on their estates and how it affected schools, housing allocation, etc. The nationalism generated by the tabloids certainly generated a gut response from many voters, but I would not call it a ‘sovereignty’ issue, more a question of bullish jingoism.

I assume that your support for the Scottish nationalist cause is due to the guarantee of a permanent right wing government in England & Wales. Clever. It also shows that you do not value Great Britain as a unified entity and are happy to throw away over 300 years of union with Scotland just as you are happy to jettison 41 years of the UK’s EU membership.

“I fear that abuse directed at Scotland, having been endemic in England for longer than the union, is incurable.”

—————-

But you won’t care about the torrent coming the other way it seems, a deluge of trumped up claims.

The other night Coups tried to brand me a Unionist when not, in an attempt to distract from an example of how Indy peeps talk arrant nonsense and then go on to try and unfairly brand others.

E.g. oil prices, where they talked rubbish and then tried to brand perfectly reasonable objections as fear mongering.

Or the Too wee nonsense that gets liberally sprayed around.

It’s not just oil, but the same applies to currency, some of the EU arguments etc. etc.

Avoid the trumped-up victimhood of the Nationalist!! Coups once tried to claim that anyone disagreeing with her was inevitably insulting her and therefore to be dismissed, even as she disagreed with all and sundry!!

If you’re still not getting it, here’s yet another example of pot kettle black, and the nonsense on both sides, enjoy this recent exchange between Davidson and Sturgeon, and marvel at the evasion of both.

The following study pretty much confirms that immigration was uppermost in the concerns of leavers, although they responded more to ‘sovereignty’ in surveys. This is simply to do with people being shy about mentioning immigration and preferring to go for a less controversial reason.

Two thirds of those who considered themselves more English than British voted to leave; two thirds of those who considered themselves more British than English voted to remain.

In Scotland, remainers (55%) were more likely than leavers (46%) to see themselves as “Scottish not British” or “more Scottish than British”.

Inconclusive perhaps, but I think that supports your contention re England but not re Scotland, so we can only guess why.

My guess, shocking though it is to me personally, suggests that England is happy to be ruled by an unreformed Westminster. Less surprising is that Scotland is less keen on Westminster calling all the shots and, perhaps, sees the EU institutions as safeguards rather than hindrances.

I agree with you entirely. But the problem is also cultural one – the typical white working class person resents hearing a foreign language being spoken. It’s the primeval fear of people who are ‘different’, bringing different habits, food, culture and language. As a degree educated middle class, middle of the road person I welcome Europeans as my kinfolk, but the average English manual worker is unable to view Europeans as anything over than foreign. A lot of this is the fault of successive British governments who have not properly educated people into the need for European solidarity and unity.